Lord, To Whom Shall We Go?

Somehow we have gotten the idea that the life of faith should be easy. I suppose that’s the result of living in a consumer culture. Some churches go right along with that idea. They use surveys and focus groups to determine just what combination of enticements will lure people into a building they don’t even call a church. Even I sometimes think that if only we had an espresso machine and really good food, people would prefer church to Starbucks.

We succumb to that outlook because there’s some truth in it. We know that people are consumers of religious services, and if they don’t like what our church provides they’ll go to another. We also live in a culture of entertainment where we expect to be passive participants. The “songs” should be musically simple and make us feel good. The “message” should make life easier.

For the most part, churches have many more people on the membership roll than attend each week. It’s easier to become a member than it is to get off the roster. But I have always been intrigued by churches that do just the opposite. They welcome anyone and everyone, but those who want to become members have more expected of them. They must commit time and money and be open to serious spiritual growth. As a result, there are fewer actual members than people attending. Such churches almost seem like New Testament communities.

This Sunday we finally hear the end of the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel. Each week Jesus has been speaking more and more bluntly, until at last his listeners can’t take it anymore. They don’t want hear about eating his flesh and drinking his blood any more than we would if we didn’t know the “code” to translate his words into communion bread and wine. Jesus was just plain offensive. It almost seemed like he didn’t care because he already knew who was going to walk away. He even asked the Twelve, “You don’t want to leave too, do you?” Simon Peter spoke for all of them. “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

“Lord, to whom shall we go?” Say whatever you want, Lord. Be as offensive as you wish. We don’t have any other choice but to stay here with you, because we know that eternal life comes from no one else. It’s true that Peter and the others would run away from the Cross, but that’s because they were afraid of death, not offended by what Jesus said.

“Lord, to whom shall we go?” Those are haunting words. I think about those words every time someone tells me that church starts too early on a day made for sleeping in. Or when an out-of-town sports event claims priority. Or when the lure of fresh coffee and the Sunday newspaper make it hard to get out of the house. I understand all of those temptations, because I once succumbed to them. None of them is a proper response to Peter’s question.

We can’t escape our culture. Even if we rebel against it, we are part of it. But we can challenge the assumption that church and life itself should be all about feeling good. Faith is difficult. Life is challenging. There’s no getting around that. Whatever happens, however, we have that knowledge, that rock, expressed by Peter:  we have come to believe and know that Jesus Christ is the Holy One of God. With that knowledge, we can face anything – even a church without an espresso machine.

[Pentecost 13: John 6:56-69.]

I Will Raise Them Up

Imagine that you were one of the first white settlers to travel to Iowa from the East in the early nineteenth century. You would have left friends and family and civilization behind in Philadelphia or New York City and headed west on horseback or covered wagon. It would take days just to get to the Appalachian Mountains, and then you’d have to struggle up and over them. The entire time you’d be traveling through forest. Occasionally a few clouds might be visible overhead. Most of the time, though, all you would see is the trail disappearing a few hundred feet in front of you. Then one day, weeks later, the land would start to open up, and suddenly you’d find yourself in the blinding sun. A sea of grass would stretch into the distance farther than you’ve ever seen before. You’d come to a river wider than any you’d ever seen and wonder how you were going to cross it.

Today if you drive across the same route, you get a little flavor of that journey, although it would be a lot faster. Much of the forest has become farmland, and instead of trails you’d be motoring on four-lane highways. But that last stretch on Route 34 from Monmouth is still a two-lane highway through some very flat and largely uninhabited land (except for Biggsville!). If you didn’t know where you were, you might think you’re nowhere. And then suddenly, Burlington appears in front of you. The wide river is still there, but this time there’s a bright new bridge to take you easily across.

When we travel now, we’re used to knowing where we’re going, and even what to expect when we get there. Travel has become so routine that interruptions or changes are experienced as a lot of hassle. Our expectations are not being met.

I think that complacent familiarity of travel is true of our spiritual journey as well. We think we know where we’re going and what is expected of us. But sometimes God has a different idea. We expect level ground when there’s a mountain ahead. We get used to plodding along, and then the trees part and we get a blinding vision of what lies ahead.

Sunday’s Gospel reading is that kind of journey. Jesus has been repeatedly saying that he is the bread of life, come down from heaven. Today he puts some teeth in that. Literally. When his listeners start arguing among themselves how he can give them his flesh to eat, Jesus makes it all concrete. He starts using a word that literally means chew or gnaw, not just eat. It’s a signal that this is not just all a metaphor, something “spiritual.” He’s talking about real food. He’s talking about the Eucharist, the one we celebrate every week that brings the Body and Blood of Jesus into us. Suddenly everyone is in a place they didn’t expect to be.

But Jesus doesn’t stop there. He has already said that those who eat his flesh and drink his blood will live forever. Today he adds that he will raise them up on the last day. He will raise them up. This is not just an earthly journey. It has another, more profound dimension. The blinding light of God bursts in from above. In Jesus Christ, eternity has broken into the present moment.

God’s breaking into our lives happens every time we celebrate the Eucharist. The writer Annie Dillard famously compared churches to “children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT…We should all be wearing crash helmets,” she said. “Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews.” There is more power here than we know about. Jesus shows us a vision of the future, and we still have our eyes on the ground, looking for stones in the path.

I’m glad we no longer have to travel by horse and buggy. Like most people, I’m in a hurry to get there, wherever it is. I find I have to use cruise control so I don’t speed. I get so caught up in where I’m going that I overlook the journey itself. It’s only in the present moments of that journey, however, that eternity breaks in, that God comes to us. And when it does, it blinds us with its brilliance. We can see farther than we’ve ever seen before. It’s only a glimpse, but it’s there for us to see. And it comes to us week by week in the Eucharist. may we always be filled with that power so that we have the strength to continue on the journey, transformed by the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.

[Pentecost 12: John 6:51-58.]

Bread of Life

[Note: This is the text of the sermon for Sunday, August 12.]

This is the first time I have stood before you since I sent a letter saying that I have been called to be the Dean of Trinity Cathedral in Davenport. I told the vestry and staff in person, and the response I generally got was, “How wonderful for you! Oh, wait…that means you’ll be leaving. How sad for us!” I have to admit that my response is pretty much the same: excitement at the adventure which will soon begin, regret that it means leaving all of you. I have said before, and no doubt I will say again, that without my three years at Christ Church I could not even consider becoming the dean of a cathedral. I have learned a lot on our short journey together, and together we have made this a better place. I have always maintained that this was your parish before I came, and will be yours when I leave. I just didn’t expect to leave so soon!

Many of you have been coming to this church for a long time. At our staff meeting this week, Deacon George mentioned that he has worked with six different rectors. (I’m not sure whether he was bragging or complaining!) That kind of long-term commitment is one of the strengths of Christ Church. Another is the fact that it is an Episcopal church, one in which the liturgy carries a lot of the weight of worship. Who leads the service does matter; I know that many of you are attuned to the content and especially the length of the sermon, for instance. But even if the sermon is not to your liking, Jesus is still here. Jesus comes to us in the people around us. Most importantly, Jesus comes to us in the Eucharist that we celebrate every week.

At the moment we are smack in the middle of hearing the entire sixth chapter of the Gospel of John, which is all about Eucharist. “I am the bread of life,” Jesus says. “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” Taken at face value, that sounds ridiculous. It surely did to some who knew Jesus when he was a boy, crawling around in the sawdust of Joseph’s carpentry shop. Typically, John refers to these scoffers as “the Jews,” his term for the religious leaders who rejected Jesus. Given that Jesus and his disciples were also Jews, it is clearly not intended as the ethnic term we use today.

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven,” Jesus said. What does that mean? What does it mean when the priest asks God to sanctify bread and wine so they become the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ? Anglicans wisely refuse to give a definite answer to that question. “Christ is really present in the bread and wine,” we say, without spelling out the details. We treat the elements reverently but we don’t worship them. We know Jesus is somehow present, and that’s enough explanation.

Trained as a scientist, I like definite answers and logical explanations. On the other hand, I know when I encounter mystery, something that is beyond science’s way of knowing. Jesus is both. There is the human element of his time on earth, something we can relate to through our own humanity. There is also the divine element drawing us toward the eternal. We eat bread and drink wine, but we also have something more, something greater, something that binds us to God and to one another.

That something, that Jesus, transcends you and me. It also connects us. When we come to the Eucharist, we are connected to all those who have come before us at Christ Church, and all those who will follow us. Even when I am no longer present, I will be with you here in the Eucharist, just as you will be with me at every Eucharist at Trinity Cathedral. It is the blessing that God has given us through Jesus Christ. Remember that blessing, that gift, in the midst of this time of transition that we are all about to enter.

[Pentecost 11: John 6:35, 41-51.]